


By the pricking of my thumbs

by Kitschgeist



Category: Machine of Death - ed. Bennardo/Malki/North, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Attempt at Humor, Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Gallows Humor, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-30 16:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12657483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitschgeist/pseuds/Kitschgeist
Summary: “My dear sir, if you would come to my house - alone, for this must be done with the utmost secrecy - I will, in my cellar, demonstrate my invention,” Dr Ramsey wrote in his final letter, which Moriarty, upon reading it, threw straight into the waste-paper basket.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Writing fanfiction makes me feel like an unrepentant hack. It's accurate. I don't follow a set structure, I basically do improv with myself, in my head, though I always have an end in mind. So it's always whatever scenes strike my fancy, held together by...nothing much.

Dr James Ramsey was a curious fellow. What was most curious about him was the lengths to which he went to satisfy his curiosity.

His spirit of enquiry not only went beyond his discipline, which was medicine, but also extended to much loftier questions, and unorthodox approaches towards answering them.

He had training in pathology, and was involved in the quest for more reliable methods of blood transfusion. Through his work, he was able to obtain some of the resources he needed for his private enquiries. But he soon realised he would only be able to continue his research through more creative means.

Determined not to give up on his personal experiments, he sought help from a certain consultant. This man, to those who knew him in other contexts, was Professor James Moriarty.

“I am in need of more samples from the currently living. You see, it does not work on the dead,” he mentioned in one of his letters.

“That is absurd. It should make no difference once blood is outside the body,” the professor wrote in his reply.

“My results are proof of the difference. Please, I require a man, marked to die, who can give me a drop of fresh blood,” wrote Dr Ramsey.

“Look for one at a gaol,” replied Moriarty.

“I wish to continue my career. I do not want to risk becoming a laughing stock,” wrote Dr Ramsey.

“These letters are already enough for that,” replied Moriarty.

“Sir, I have heard you take an interest in research that academia is unable to appreciate. I guarantee, if I can show you my evidence so far, you will be convinced,” wrote Dr Ramsey.

“Explain to me how it works, if you want to continue this correspondence,” Moriarty demanded.

“My dear sir, if you would come to my house - alone, for this must be done with the utmost secrecy - I will, in my cellar, demonstrate my invention,” Dr Ramsey wrote in his final letter, which Moriarty, upon reading it, threw straight into the waste-paper basket.

Unfortunately, even if Moriarty changed his mind, the two would never again have the chance to meet in person, as Dr Ramsey died shortly after.

 

* * *

 

Moriarty crossed out the last item of the list he had written on a piece of paper.

“Smooth sailing as usual,” he said, and tossed the paper into the fireplace, where it shrivelled into ash. “Thank you, Moran.”

Colonel Sebastian Moran downed the last of his glass of whiskey. “One last thing,” he said. He took a letter out of his pocket and handed it to Moriarty.

Moriarty opened it. When he saw the first line of typewritten text, he grimaced.

“I told you to refuse anything, from any channel, if it's from James Ramsey.”

“It’s not from him,” said Moran. “Read on.”

“‘I am writing with regards to the ‘death machine’’,” Moriarty read, “‘invented by Dr James Ramsey, my late husband.’”

“There, you see?”

“His wife? What next, will his children take up the banner?”

“It's interesting,” said Moran, “Read all of it.”

Moriarty continued reading. Soon, his eyes lit up.

“‘...instructions to invite you to destroy the machine and his research, in the event that you are still alive after his death.’ Well!”

A moment later, Moriarty put down the letter. “It seems I will be going to Scotland.”

“Have a nice trip, Professor,” said Moran. “Enjoy your time with the ‘death machine’ in Dr Ramsey’s cellar.”

“Moran,” said Moriarty, shaking his head, “you know I wouldn't want you to miss out on something like this.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Professor Moriarty and Colonel Moran came to the door of one among a row of brick houses on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The door was opened by a wan-faced woman in her early forties, in full mourning dress.

“Good afternoon, Mrs Ramsey. I am Dr Pelham,” said Moriarty. “My sincere condolences. I wish we could have met in happier circumstances.”

“Well, we would not have met, if not for this,” said Iris Ramsey, matter-of-factly. She turned to his companion, eyeing him warily.

“This is Mr Guest,” said Moriarty. “He knows much more about mechanics than I do. I was worried I would be out of my depth if I didn't bring him along.”

“Bring the whole town in, why don’t you,” said Mrs Ramsey.

Moriarty took a deep breath. “I promise this matter will stay between the three of us,” he said.

“I met your husband once, myself,” added Moran, “and I wouldn't dream of hurting his reputation.”

“Oh, come in,” sighed Mrs Ramsey. “I've been so tetchy lately, I'm sorry. You both know about it already. What's done is done.”

 

* * *

 

She showed them in and led them down to the cellar. There, she switched on the electric lights, revealing a metal cube on a table in the centre of the room, and walls covered with haphazard layers of papers, many almost falling off.

Most had arcane diagrams labelled with cramped handwriting. But a handful were each filled with a single dark, ominous ink blot atop a square grid, like grotesque pupils glaring at whoever dared enter the room. Moriarty stepped closer to examine them.

“He would put a drop of blood between glass slides, fix it in front of a light, and trace it,” Mrs Ramsey explained. “He wanted to find patterns.”

Moriarty frowned in distaste. “A mere revival of ancient portents,” he said. “Did he read animals’ entrails, too? Could he tell the future with their bones?”

Mrs Ramsey stiffened. “I didn't care for this whole project, or any of his methods,” she said, “but he believed in it so much. He tried every angle he could think of until he made it work.”

“And you didn't stop him, Mrs Ramsey?” asked Moriarty.

“Stop him?” said Mrs Ramsey, indignant. “Every day since he started all this, I told him how I felt about it!

“I took some of his papers away, years ago. When he found out, he wasn't upset. He said he didn't blame me, that it was only natural. After that, he changed the cellar door lock, and kept the only key with him at all times.

“When he started spending even more time on the machine, I threatened to leave him. I had made no plans to do so, I only said it in anger. But again, he wasn't upset. He looked...sad. He said he could no more stop me from leaving than I could stop him from working on the machine.

“I hated it. But I pitied him. I pitied him, so I decided I had to be there for him. I was the only other person who knew what he was really trying to do. Or, I thought so, until he told me about you, Doctor.”

“He only told me what he wanted to achieve,” said Moriarty, “not how he was going to do it. It was so long ago when I last met him, before he married. It was after he married you that he started on the machine, yes?”

“Yes,” said Mrs Ramsey, “when we moved into this house.”

“I had almost forgotten what he said, until he wrote to me all of a sudden,” said Moriarty. “He must have chosen me because I didn't laugh him off like the others, back then. But maybe I should have, if it would have stopped him.”

“Would anything have stopped him?” Mrs Ramsey said. “Oh, I'm sounding like him!” She crossed her arms.

“Mrs Ramsey,” said Moran, who had been looking at the contraption in the middle of the room, “Is this the only machine? The final model?”

“As far as I could tell, yes, that's the last, and there is no other,” she said. “He kept everything down here.”

The machine was a metal cube the size of a large crate, featureless on all but one of its faces. In the centre of this one face was a square opening not much larger than the width of a finger. Beside it was a button, and below it was, incongruously, a typewriter. It was not attached to the cube, but facing towards it, loosely embraced by two narrow metal appendages protruding from the cube.

“My best guess,” said Moran, “is that a child sits inside, looks through the hole, and types a fortune.” Moriarty glared at him.

“I don't understand how it works, but I know that’s not it,” said Mrs Ramsey, coolly. “All I know is that it does work.”

She took a small cardboard box from a shelf in a corner and set it down on the edge of the table. She opened the box, took out a stack of index cards, and passed them to Moran.

He began reading them. “Pelham,” he said, “have a look.”

Moriarty took some of the cards. On one side of each card was a number. The other side was divided in half by a line, with a date written on each side. On the left, a slip of paper with typewritten text was pasted, and on the right were handwritten notes.

“Causes of death,” muttered Moran. “They match up. But these are too easy to forge.”

Going through the cards, Moriarty was about to agree, when one of them gave him pause.

HEART FAILURE, it read on the left. But on the right was written: “suicide by gunshot after death of wife”.

“Dr Ramsey had a romantic streak,” he said, passing it to Moran.

“Mrs Ramsey, did any of these people know about these results while they were alive?” asked Moriarty.

“No,” she said. “All the samples were taken as part of James’ blood research. He told them nothing.”

“Did you see the machine in action?”

“Once,” she said, “when he tested himself.”

Moriarty and Moran regarded her with renewed interest. “Was the result accurate?” asked Moran.

“I don't know yet,” said Mrs Ramsey. “He folded it without looking and gave it to me to seal and keep until after his death. It was the same day he gave me those instructions to contact you. He wanted me to open it in front of you, if possible.”

She pursed her lips. “But maybe James did look. Maybe he had gone mad by that point.” Her breath hitched, and she brought her hand to her mouth.

“Your husband was a talented doctor, and I'm glad to have known him,” said Moriarty, gently.

Mrs Ramsey steadied herself. “You must have been a great friend to him, for him to trust you so much. It's a shame he only got in touch with you again this late.”

“It is. But the best I can do now is honour his last requests,” said Moriarty. “Let’s see his result.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

"I will show you his result and his message for you upstairs," said Mrs Ramsey, "then we can destroy the machine."

"How will we destroy it?" asked Moriarty.

"See those three screws in the middle of the the back panel? He wrote that if you unscrew them, something will explode inside."

"Inside?" asked Moran. "This explosion won't blow through the box?"

"No, it shouldn't," said Mrs Ramsey. "But there are some sandbags over there. And he wrote that I shouldn't do it myself. Oh, I never did thank you for coming today, gentlemen."

"Perhaps you two could go ahead," said Moriarty. "I'd like to have a last look at everything."

Mrs Ramsey nodded. Moran followed her upstairs.

 

* * *

 

Mrs Ramsey brought two envelopes, one opened and one sealed, to the sitting-room. She took a seat across from Moran.

"Should I check on him?" she asked.

"Oh, no," said Moran, "he's the sentimental type. Probably just reminiscing."

Mrs Ramsey sighed. "That place will foul any good memories he has of James."

"When Pelham first told me what the machine we were going to look at really was, I was more amused than anything. But I suppose you never saw it that way."

"Never," she said. "The thought of it was always dreadful."

"Like playing God?" he asked.

"No, the opposite. Creating God from a machine. Or revealing Him. I don't know. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, Mr Guest." 

"Don't you think the more aware people are of their deaths, the more they can appreciate their lives?"

"We don't need the machine for that," she said, darkly. "The machine would rob us of our wills. If fate is an invisible cage, the machine shows us its bars." 

Moran smiled. "Nicely put, Mrs Ramsey. And I admit, I do agree with you. It's better to judge one's own lot in life."

"I wouldn't be half as bothered," said Mrs Ramsey, "if there was any proof that it didn't work. But those few results came true, in one way or another."

"There will be no more of this business after today," said Moran. "We'll take care of it."

"That's right, Mrs Ramsey," said Moriarty, who had just come back from the cellar.

Upon seeing him, she gave him the open envelope. "The instructions I told you about," she said.

"'...evident from lack of support that the world is not ready...Dr Pelham's support, which he had not given me...Dr Pelham, my good friend, a devil's advocate without compare, who is almost as against this project as you are, if he is available, to assist you in destroying the machine and burning my notes. Otherwise, tell no one else...'" Moriarty read, for Moran's benefit.

"Understood," said Moriarty. "Now, let's see his result, then we can start cleaning up."

"Perhaps," said Mrs Ramsey, "we could burn the result as well."

Moriarty looked at her sympathetically. "You don't want to read it?"

She shook her head.

"But could I see it, Mrs Ramsey?"

She handed him the sealed envelope, and he opened it. "Forgive me, but I was never informed of the circumstances of your husband's death. Could you...?"

"What it says on the paper, right?" she said. "The machine never lies."

"I must know what really happened. I won't tell you what it says."

"He choked," said Mrs Ramsey.

"On...?"

"He choked on a damned fish bone," Mrs Ramsey said.

Moriarty nodded as solemnly as he could.

The paper read: BROKEN BONE.


	4. Chapter 4

Back at their hotel room after the business at the Ramsey residence, Moriarty emptied his pockets. Papers piled up on the writing-desk.

Moran glanced at them. Schematics, mostly.

"I'd thought that was what you were up to," he said.

"Even if the the machine never served its purpose," said Moriarty, "the typing mechanism, at the very least, could be put to use somewhere else."

"If even that works. If Dr Ramsey was mad, Mrs Ramsey was impressionable, and they were the only witnesses, who's to say this wasn't a hoax? That we didn't come all the way to Edinburgh for a hoax?"

"No, we came all the way here because of a letter you so kindly delivered to Dr Pelham."

"Thank you for reminding me," said Moran, flatly.

"The machine functioned," said Moriarty, with a glint in his eye. "I am not sure it did what it was supposed to, but it functioned. And what on earth would either of them have gained from faking all this?"

"Hold on," said Moran, "You tested yourself?"

"It made whirring sounds for so bloody long before it typed anything, I thought Mrs Ramsey might have come down and caught me."

"I kept her busy talking about free will," said Moran. "She was so absorbed by the topic, I dare say she thought it was her idea to begin with."

"It was worth the wait," said Moriarty. With a flick of his wrist, he produced a folded piece of paper. It had Dr Ramsey's messy handwriting on its outer surface.

He held out his other hand, palm upwards, and motioned for Moran to do the same. He placed the paper in Moran's hand and immediately curled Moran's fingers over it.

"Will it disappear?" said Moran. "You palmed it again, didn't you? You're getting better at this. Feels like it's still there."

"It is still there," said Moriarty, clasping Moran's hand more firmly. "If you read what's typed inside, don't tell me what it says."

"You believe in it?" asked Moran, incredulously.

"Not...yet. But I won't be around to see the proof."

"For God's sake, you have the blueprints! If you want, build a new machine and test other people!"

"First of all: did Ramsey's machine work? Assume all his test subjects' results were faked," said Moriarty. "That leaves only his test. If it was faked, it was faked by either him or his wife. From what I know, I do not suspect his wife. If he faked it, why? Was it suicide? Why would he kill himself in a way that might draw outside attention to the work he tried to hide?

"If he did not compose it himself, he either read it, or did not. If he read it, he either died that way on purpose, or by coincidence. If he made the connection between 'broken bone' and choking on a fish bone and chose to die that way, again, why? The same caprice that led him to forge 'heart failure'? But if it was coincidence, his invention effectively succeeded in this case, and more convincingly so if he had not read it.

"Now, you could propose he suffered from a sudden mental imbalance in his final days, which led him to kill himself in this unusual way, regardless of whether he forged the result. Never mind the preparation he would have required to make it look accidental. Perhaps he only saw the relation at that very moment."

"And there it is, your answer," said Moran, lightly pulling his hand back towards him. "The blighter's work drove him mad."

Moriarty did not lose his grip. "Of course, all the results could have been genuine, but only correct by chance. Where was Ramsey's other work? No evidence of his failures."

Moran sighed. "Ah," he said, "about that."

Moran took a thin stack of cards out of his trouser pocket using his other hand, and tossed them onto the desk. They were the same type of index cards they had viewed in the cellar, but instead of numbers, they were labelled with lightly-pencilled names, and the right sides of the opposite faces, where the confirmed causes of death should have been, were blank.

"Well," said Moriarty, staring at them. "Thank you."

"Look," said Moran, "I took them on a whim, in case these people could be useful someday. You can wait and find out how they die, but I don't put any stock in the machine, myself. I don't believe the future is written out. Death is more than lines on a page."

"Many would disagree with that," said Moriarty. "Death registrars, for starters."

Moran shrugged. "My point is, I was never fond of the idea of higher authorities." 

"Higher authorities than me, you mean?" said Moriarty. Moran laughed dryly, but held his gaze.

He let go of Moran's hand.

 

* * *

 

Moran had that same folded paper with him several years later, at the foot of the Reichenbach Falls.

He had never read it. He knew Moriarty had commissioned someone to build a new machine, but he wasn't involved in the specifics. After he learnt Ramsey's other subjects' results were accurate, he told Moriarty he wanted nothing to do with the machine.

He brought Moriarty's result with him on his journey because he wanted to. He brought it with him on that day because he wanted to. He had it with him on many a day when absolutely no harm came to Moriarty.

So it wasn't fate, then. Until the last moment, he hadn't surrendered to it.

When he reached the river, there was no trace of Moriarty. Not his corpse, not a scrap of clothing, not a drop of blood.

It occurred to him that he had never seen Moriarty bleed. And that it was precisely because he was present at those times in the past when Moriarty could have bled, that he did not.

But there had always been blood in place of his. Mostly, it was other people's blood. Once, it had been quite a lot of Moran's own. But now, the clear alpine water made a mockery of things.

He needed to see someone bleed for this. Could you never admit you bled the same as lesser men, Moriarty? Fine, then! It would be Holmes.

He began to feel light-headed. He found himself reaching for the sealed envelope in his coat's inner pocket.

He opened it and read the contents. He laughed. He fell to his knees, and he laughed.

IMMORTAL, it read.

Dr Ramsey's toil and Mrs Ramsey's trouble - its final result was this farce. Was it an error unique to Ramsey's model? Was Moriarty's death an exception? It didn't matter now, he couldn't trust the machine.

Life and death had nothing to do with some Scottish doctor's typewriter, after all. In any other context, he would have been relieved to see it fail so spectacularly.

He knew better than the machine, he was sure. Moriarty was a mere mortal, no matter how easy it had been to believe otherwise. And Holmes couldn't be immortal. Moran would see to that.

He wondered if the machine would have had the decency to get Holmes' death right.

If it would have said: BULLET TO THE BRAIN.

**Author's Note:**

> By the pricking of my thumbs,  
> Something wicked this way comes.  
>  _\- Second Witch, Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1_
> 
>  **Author's notes:**  
>  Edinburgh - Blood transfusions (thanks, Wikipedia). Also, Doyle. But Ramsey was not intended to be a 'Doyle' figure, even if he is a Scottish doctor with interesting ideas about death.  
> IMMORTAL - In reference to Sherlock "Reichen-back from the dead" Holmes. But if you want to imagine immortal!Moriarty eventually busting Moran out of prison...go for it.  
> Pelham - Name taken from the schoolmaster from _Unman, Wittering, and Zigo_ who was pushed off a cliff by his students. Guest was just a guest.  
>  That's not how blood looks when you put it between slides! - Sorry.  
> Why does Moriarty do magic tricks? - Because his career progression moves backwards from criminal mastermind to small-time con-man. Also, some card tricks need a lot of maths. Real answer: something in my subconscious.  
> Why is everything about this paper-thin? - Because that was the depth of thought I gave to it.


End file.
